Malaysia has not received formal notice of these attachments, law and institutional reform minister Azalina Othman Said said, adding that the government was therefore, unable to confirm the accuracy of such media reports.
Azalina went on to say that if the reports were indeed true, it would not be the first time that the purported Sulu heirs had attempted to seize Malaysia’s assets in Luxembourg.
The previous attempted seizures, she said, were made on the basis of a purported final award rendered by a Spanish lawyer whose appointment as arbitrator was nullified.
The Petronas Azerbaijan (Shah Deniz) and Petronas South Caucasus units were seized in July last year but the order had been set aside by a Luxembourg district court.
“Rather, this alleged new attempt to attach assets would follow a first and failed attachment, which was recently lifted by the Luxembourg courts,” she said in a statement.
Yesterday, Reuters reported that Luxembourg court bailiffs issued fresh seizure orders for two units of Petronas this week, following a bid by descendants of a former sultanate to enforce a US$15-billion (RM66 billion) award they had won against Malaysia. The award was granted to them by a French arbitration court last year.
Azalina said, however, if the reports of this attempted seizure were indeed true, Malaysia would continue to defend its rights before the courts, so that it was “also promptly lifted”.
“We remind the public once again that the purported heirs and their counsels are trying to distort the truth before the media, just as they have done before the courts.”
She said that this case was an arbitral scandal that has undermined the two most fundamental institutions of the rule of law: respecting the law and obeying the court.
“And Malaysia will spare no effort in defending its rights.”
The dispute has its origin in an 1878 Deed of Cession between the then sultan of Sulu, Sultan Jamal Al Alam, and Baron de Overbeck, the then maharaja of Sabah, and British North Borneo Company’s Alfred Dent.
Pursuant to the agreement, Jamal ceded sovereignty over large parts of Sabah to Dent and Overbeck, who agreed that they and their future heirs would pay the heirs of the sultan 5,000 Mexican dollars annually.
Although Malaysia took over these payments when it became the successor of the agreement following Sabah’s independence and the formation of the federation in 1963, the payments – equivalent to RM5,300 a year – ceased in 2013 after an incursion by armed men into Lahad Datu, along the eastern coast of Sabah.
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